What you need to know
- World of Warcraft is among the game industry's most successful titles, entering its 20th year of profitable operation.
- Microsoft acquired the game when it purchased Activision-Blizzard, which was finalized last year.
- Over the summer, World of Warcraft gained its latest expansion, The War Within, and it has been largely well-received.
- However, an influx of new players have noticed that World of Warcraft's aging levelling experience has become easier and more simplistic than ever — because you can no longer actually die.
World of Warcraft is one of the game industry's biggest success stories. Launched almost 20 years ago, the game has gone from strength to strength, still delivering a premier MMORPG experience even during some of its worst expansion cycles. Microsoft acquired World of Warcraft when it purchased Activision-Blizzard, and it remains one of Windows' best PC games.
The most recent one, World of Warcraft: The War Within, has vastly improved the experience for casual players and soloists, adding a new type of dungeon that solo players can enjoy, while also maintaining the usual endgame difficulty curve for those who want a real challenge.
In my WoW: The War Within review, as well as my "Should you play World of Warcraft in 2024?" article, both times I've criticized the game's levelling experience. World of Warcraft's new-player experience is sub-par generally speaking, owing to overlapping timelines, outdated story content, and a insistence on speeding players to the endgame without care or consideration for storytelling or immersion. I would argue that this abandonment of WoW's levelling experience is partially responsible for the interest in WoW: Classic, which had a much, much better delivery.
As part of The War Within, Blizzard has been updating, hotfixing, and patching the game at a breakneck pace. I wrote this past week about how the World of Warcraft's new Delve dungeon system has missed potential owing to balance issues, with some classes far better at soloing the content than others.
World of Warcraft's difficulty curve has undergone various permutations over the years. 25-player Mythic raids offer a blisteringly tough challenge for the most skilled min-maxxers, while Mythic+ 5-man dungeons scale in difficulty based on your choices. Delves too have a tier system, going all the way up to Tier 13 complete with a special solo boss. Many of the game's endgame systems reward player skill and dedication, and gently ease players into the experience from Story mode dungeons with AI followers, to mid-core Heroic raids, all the way to Mythic difficulties that even have esports events revolving around them.
That curated difficulty curve is exactly why I'm slightly baffled by this latest change to the game's new-player experience. It was noticed by players in my guild and, as far as I can tell, hasn't been clearly documented by Blizzard.
In the above clip, you can see my level 47 dwarf Paladin getting whaled on by elite monsters, only to find himself fully invincible. It seems that new players cannot die in World of Warcraft anymore, which completely eliminates any and all risk from actually playing the game.
I'm unsure what this "Obsidian Blessing" buff, which protects you from death essentially from levels 1 through to 70 aims to achieve. For new players, it creates a completely inconsistent experience between 1 to 70 and levels 71 to 80, since as far as I can tell, it isn't really explained anywhere why exactly you're unable to die in the Dragon Isles. The levelling experience for new customers directs players straight to the previous Dragonflight expansion, which offers at least some basic context for the wider World of Warcraft universe. I've argued previously that Blizzard should remake the old WoW levelling experience with a focus on small-stakes evergreen content that builds immersion and flavor, much like the old experience that made the game a huge hit in the first place.
WoW's levelling experience was far less forgiving than today's modern experience, making you feel as though danger lurked in every corner, adding intrigue and mystique. I've tried many times to get friends and family into the game, only for them to bow out owing to the simplistic, and un-immersive gameplay that is at total odds with the current expansion experience. Now, Blizzard has taken that ease to a whole new level. Removing all the danger from World of Warcraft is akin to making it feel completely arbitrary. Why not just remove levelling all together, if Blizzard has started to think that all types of friction are the problem?
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Not all players are the same, but no player wants to be bored
I don't begrudge Blizzard's intent to make the game more accessible to players. I used to raid 5 days a week during my early 20s to chase server-first boss kills, and now I simply can't imagine ever having that kind of time. I love that Delves have made gear progression more accessible for players with less free time or less inclination to group with others. I love that World of Warcraft: The War Within also has a story mode raid experience for solo players to experience story beats typically exclusive to guilds and group players. In fact, I would argue that the story mode feature should be expanded to the entire raid, rather than just the final boss.
What I find it hard to advocate for is making World of Warcraft boring. My level 47 protection Paladin, which is supposed to be a low-damage defensive class, already can one-hit-kill monsters with critical hits. And now, you're telling me I don't even need to actually play the game to level up? I would argue that this isn't going to have the intended impact Blizzard might want it to have — death teachers players the risks of standing in area-effect spells, or over-pulling monsters. If you teach players that there are no consequences for hitting 0% health, then you're going to teach them endgame is like that too. MMORPGs need to have depth, challenge, and risks to justify those juicy rewards.
I'm all for improving access to the game, but Blizzard has gone way too far with this one, and should seriously reconsider, in my view. Perhaps there's a perfectly valid reason for this that I'm overlooking. Maybe it's a bug, and the Obsidian Blessing is not actually supposed to make you unkillable. Maybe they have access to data that I don't and immortality is exactly what the game needs to attract new players. I would argue that a dedicated levelling experience that comes with localized evergreen stories, complete with engaging gameplay and risk and reward paradigms is what it needs to find new players. But hey, I'm certainly no game dev, just a passionate fan.
